INTERVIEW WITH ROME IN MONOCHROME (DOOM/SHOEGAZE/SLOWCORE/POST-ROCK)

1. How would you describe your music?Hi people. Well, it’s quite hard: it’s made of many different layers, it comes from many different sources and inspirations and sometimes goes wherever it wants to. Anyway, in spite of the fact that I don’t like to use a too much boundaries and definitions, I think that it could sound like a mixture of doom, shoegaze, post rock and slowcore. It’s just my idea and these are the things I consciously think when I write, but when we play and arrange the stuff together the influences of the six of us melt in a way that no one of us can describe. It happens, we just follow it. Each of us has a different answer to this question, I suppose.

2. What gave you the idea for the single title? Well, it’s just brainstorming: I think it was some Gianluca’s spark. I had this song on a home demo, with those extremely sad and enigmatic lyrics and he said “it should be called Between the dark and shadows”…I’m quite sure it happened this way.

3. Do you work together with others in the writing process?Yeah, in our own way. I wrote the chords, songs structures and all the lyrics (except a collaboration with Gianluca for one of them) for almost all the songs, but the arrangement phase is important as songwriting for us. The songs grow a lot in our rehearsal room, we start from my stuff and simply travel inside ourselves together and when we are back we generally have a finished song. This is what happens, with a few exceptions: there are a couple of tracks that started from ideas and structures from other members of the band, but they were arranged and processed from all of us in the same way.

4. How much time to do you take record songs?Our three guitarists’ arrangements, violin, some lead/backing vocals interplay…there’s a lot of work behind it. There are 4 or 5 guitar lines on most of “Away from light” tracks, and this takes a lot of time in writing and arranging. If you are well prepared, you can record it all in a fast way but this means work, work, work. Let me add that this side of us is growing bigger and stronger in the new stuff we are working on: we will push the harmonies and interplays to the edge and I am extremely proud of it. Be prepared!

5. Does this release differ from past music releases? How?Well, the mood is the same, but it’s quite more organic and rich of details at the same time. The line up is solid, stable, and we know each a lot more than before. This is clearly reflected in our music. 6. Do you like to change it up for each release with lyrical themes?I don’t think it will happen. Lyrics are just me and represent the man I am: this could change just if I change and in the way I’ll change. My views and beliefs are here with me and I don’t think they will change a lot in the next future: what is happening is that the next album is a lot less “me looking inside of myself” then “Away from light”, but it’s about the pain and the suffering that comes from interact with people. It’s more “why did you do this to me?” in a painful and regretful way. 7. Where do you draw your influences and inspirations from?If you talk about music, there’s too much to tell. I think that Red House Painters, Mono, Slowdive and My Dying Bride are important to define our sound, and maybe they are the first names people recognizes listening to us. But Radiohead, Joy Division, Agalloch (which I’m listening to right now), God Is An Astronaut, Katatonia, Low, The Cure, The Smiths, Chameleons, Television, A Perfect Circle are also important to us, as well as Tricky or Massive Attack or everything we choose to listen. It’s a lot of stuff, I know, and each member of the band would answer differently, I think. Our influences are various and there’s a lot of “not metal” stuff: in my case, the biggest part of it. At the time I have 4 cds in my car: Dirty Three “Ocean songs”, Manes “Vilosophe”, Nearly God “Nearly God”, Bon Iver “For Emma, forever ago”, yesterday I was listening at the new Low album “Double negative” which is gonna be easily the record of the year, to me. It’s simply over everything else, what a masterpiece. I am also a big Neil Young and Johnny Cash fan. 8. What has been the most enjoyable thing you have done as a musician/singer? Well, they are a lot. Share the stage with Anathema or Antimatter, or Pestilence were dreams come true, because I am still a “fan” and a music lover, but what I love the most is listening to people after a gig or answer to them writing me: I am not so good in social skills but when someone says that we are important to him/her in some way, or that some song or line or whatever touched them in the deep, I find the greatest purpose in everything I’m doing. Recently I’ve got in touch with a young woman from a foreign country…she wrote me that she would like “Between the dark and shadows” to be played at her funeral…when I answered that I always dreamed to go deep inside people this way she told me that she had a second stage cancer and that she was not joking: I think that reaching people’s heart this way and share deep emotions is the greatest thing that could happen to human beings. I was recently informed that she recently passed away and it broke my heart. Bye Makaela, see you on the other side, if there’s some. 9. What do you feel is the biggest challenge going forward with your career?As I said before, touch people in deep, it’s the best thing you can do as an human being on this stone in its random orbit. And, of course, reach as much people as possible so I can be able to survive with music I play and I would not need have to have a regular job, which I have now. This is the hardest part, especially in Italy. 10. What do you enjoy outside of music? I am a hard TV series’ fan, and many atmospheres and lyrics come from episodes or stuff I was watching: I think about True Detective, The Bridge, The Man In the High Castle, Dark, Fringe…I love crime and sci-fi stories with some conspirational themes and a desperate and negative mood. I also read a lot, about conspiracies and aliens but also narrative, ancient and contemporary. I love Auster, Houellebecq, Lindqvist as well as Lovecraft (a true god). I am a hard traveller and I love walking, but however, lazying in front of TV is great, especially to watch A.S. Roma playing football. Bye mates, see you on the road and join the cult of the absence of color.

About
Ancient Visionz

Gaz Visionz is a writer and Internet Radio DJ with the punk/metal show 'The Wastelands'. He is also a YouTube podcaster/creator, host of Ancient Visionz Talk Radio, co-host of Paradigm Radio with Planet X Films, and a passionate fan of hardcore punk, metal, underground hip hop, movies, science-fiction, comics, and indie film.

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